Leaving the recommendation based research to somebody else

A report has recently come out from the Grattan Institute claiming that ‘improving teacher efficiency’, rather than spending money on smaller class sizes, is the strategy that should be pursued in order to improve education in Australia. The report suggests we need a 10% increase in teacher efficiency and for each grade to ‘incorporate an extra 5% of a year’s worth of learning.’

Yesterday evening I was out with some people, including a 12 and a 14 year old. They mentioned something about some of the teachers at their schools and I mentioned this Grattan Institute report. Straight away the 14 year old replied, ‘How can you possibly measure that?’ I agree with his assessment. (I have also been reminded that I should probably work on my conversation skills.)

Sure the report does plot out a few graphs and I am not suggesting they got these figures out of thin air. I do understand not everybody can just be asking ‘what does this mean?’ all the time, and the fact that my initial assessment was exactly the same as a year 7 student probably tells you more about how much/little I have taken away from my university education than it does about the report. However, little things like this remind me why I do not have any desire to be an ‘expert’.